Page 7 of Witch Please

Imogen dutifully switched places with me. Her wide eyes loudly broadcasting her obvious discomfort. She took Sophie’s legs, positioning them around her lower back, her hands wrapping around Sophie’s knees. I rest my hand on Imogen’s arm, the soft marl of her sweater tickling the palm of my hand. The moment my hand came in contact with her shoulder, her entire stature tensed.

“It’s okay,” I murmured, trying to calm her as one would try to keep a skittish pony from bolting, “I’m just trying to show you how I picture your role in my head. Lady Macbeth, I believe the scene begins with you.”

“Give me what I want Macbeth,” she began, opening her legs and gyrating with gusto against Imogen. “We are power. Commoners want what we have. We’re wealthy, good looking, charming—the quintessential power couple. The only thing we don’t have are doting children in matching monograms. You need them,weneed them, to win you the Presidency.”

“Yes, Macbeth,” I tucked a strand of hair behind Imogen’s ear, running my lips around her ear lobe for a moment before delivering the next line. She shivered. Not a stage shiver, but her whole body trembled at my touch. My body reacted in the most primal way. “She speaks the truth. A child will unite you. Bind you. Forever insinuated into her family. The Gruoch family. Forever.”

I spun and twisted around Imogen as she continued to act in Macbeth’s role. Touching and caressing her, whispering to her, and trying to seduce “Macbeth” with my words. The more she reacted to my caresses the more I wanted to do it. Surely, it was simply because she’d discovered her inner actress. She riffed off the energy I put into the scene.

“Okay, Travis, get back in here. Let’s try again with Imogen in her rightful role.”

I watched as the two repeated the scene. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth acting in their roles as they should. However, Imogen had withdrawn inside of herself. Her actions a step up from timid, but certainly not as self-assured as I wanted her to be.

“Okay. Great. Let’s call it for today. For the third day of script reads—we’re getting there.” It took everything in me to hold back any intense critique. From the years of interacting with Imogen, she reacted to sunshine, and would flower under praise.

Chapter 7

This stupid play was such a mistake. I would be a laughingstock. I didn’t have what it took to execute this role. I should have never fallen for Sebastian’s damsel in distress routine.

“You are doing great.”

Sebastian joined me at the table, handing me my laptop as I furiously shoved folders and papers into my bag.

“While I’m up there floundering, looking like a gigantic ass, the least you can do is not lie to me.”

“Imogen, it’s the first week. We’re still in table reads. You need to give yourself time to settle into your role. You’re doing great. Truly.”

His firm grip on my shoulders held me in place, forcing me to look at him dead in the eyes. I searched those eyes every which way trying to find a glint, or an accompanying smirk that would out him as a liar. I saw none.

“Sebastian, surely there is someone on this campus with more experience than me that can do this role justice.”

“I don’t want them. I want you. My friend.”

There was that word again.

“Doyle—when have we ever been friends? Colleagues, sure. Partners in a common goal, okay. But friends? You can’t even pronounce my name right.”

He chuckled, apparently as surprised as I was that I chose today to call him out for a pet name he’d been using for years.

“Forgive me for being British.”

He didn’t appear sorry or in need of forgiveness. He smiled, grabbing hold of the bag I didn’t need him to carry, leading the way out of the theater.

“You call me Geenie as if my name were Imojean, instead of Ginny—if I were to actually have and use a nickname, Ginny is closer than Geenie.”

“Mo is a horrible name, and Jenny is far too common for a woman graced with such an austere name. Ginny is tolerable, but too reminiscent of Harry Potter for a woman of your academic aptitude. Geenie is mine alone, unsullied by anyone else. But if you prefer something else…”

He crowded my personal space. Granted the halls of the theater were narrow, and we were weighed down with bags and books—well he was weighed down with bags and books; I was weighed down with plenty of insecurities to fill the whole theater. I was trapped. In more ways than one. His explanation tickled me in the sweetest way, and now I didn’t want him to change. However I’d just mounted that hill prepared to die on it. How did I call back a retreat now?

“I think this role needs femininity and sexuality more than academic knowledge. You need a woman who is comfortable walking in Louboutins who regularly gets blow outs at some overpriced salon. Not someone perfectly happy in Birkenstocks and ponytails.”

Sebastian followed me to my car, loading my bags into the backseat before opening my car door for me.

“Would you allow me to test one theory?” he asked, inserting himself once again far too close in my personal space. He didn’t wait for me to say “sure” or “tell me about this theory you want to test,” instead, the warmth of his palm snaked around the back of my neck. Before I could register the change in temperature, his lips glided against mine, claiming them in a firestorm of heat. The kiss couldn’t have lasted more than a heartbeat, but in that single beat, the barren wasteland of my desire stoked into awareness at once, burning through my bloodstream, licking at each forgotten crevasse. I was breathless and drowning, groping against Sebastian’s arms as if standing on the cliff of Mordor about to fall into an ocean of fire.

“The best actresses in the world can’t fake that.”

“What?”

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